If you go around to the back of the Brown Bear statue on the College
Green, you will see a single slate brick set into its base. Covered
with scraggly scratch marks, it doesn't look like much. In fact,
although the front of the statue is one of the most photographed
backdrops on campus, few people bother going behind it.

The brick is actually from the rock where theologian Roger Williams
alit from his canoe in 1636 onto land he'd bought from the Narragansett
Indians, establishing a settlement called Providence. The slate was
embedded into the base of the statue when it was first erected in 1923.

As the inscription beneath the rock notes, Williams began the
settlement "to hold forth his lively experiment of independence and
strength and courage." He was the first American to advocate for the
separation of church and state and argued that all citizens should be
able to follow their own consciences when it came to religion. For
this, he was tried and convicted of sedition and heresy. (Pembroke Hall
is named in his honor, after the college he attended at Cambridge
University in England.)

"May [Williams'] spirit live in Brown men," states the text below
the rock on the statue. Presumably if Williams were around today, he'd
include women in that wish, too.

Photo by Erik Gould

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The Brown Alumni Magazine is published bimonthly, in print since 1900.